Facebook status update: bummed

Facebook is everywhere — on the Web (500 million users, and counting), in the movies (“The Social Network”) and on Wall Street. But even Facebook is finding that some status updates are better kept under wraps.

The company recently made a deal with investment bank Goldman Sachs for $500 million in financing that valued Facebook at an astounding $50 billion. That created so much buzz, securities regulators began looking into the mechanics of the deal.

Goldman had invited some of its wealthiest clients to invest in the company, using carefully constructed “special-purpose vehicles” to group many investors into one. Keeping the number of investors under 500 avoids triggering Securities and Exchange Commission rules that would force Facebook to disclose its financial performance and other pertinent facts.

The rules were put in place to protect investors from making investments without having enough information to calculate the risk. Two years after the financial crisis, Wall Street still seems bent on bending the rules for its own advantage.

On Monday, Goldman “disinvited” its U.S. clients, saying the intense media coverage may have violated rules about private placements. Now only Goldman clients outside U.S. boundaries will be able to invest until Facebook goes public, perhaps sometime next year.

Only then will we know if Facebook’s early investors got in on the ground floor of the next Google, or the next Pets.com.

Guns on sale in Tucson

It was business as usual at the West Gun Show in Tucson Saturday.

Well, not quite. The flag flew at half-staff, and there was a moment of silence for the six people killed and 13 injured in a shooting rampage a week earlier.

But business quickly resumed, and was reported to be brisk all day. The record-keeping was as skimpy as usual at these weekend gun shows that avoid normal reporting requirements.

Particularly popular were the extended-round ammunition clips used by the alleged Tucson gunman, Jared Loughner. Apparently there was some concern that a ban on their sale might be reinstated.

Charles Heller of the Arizona Citizens Defense League said he bought eight full-capacity magazines. He told a reporter he was carrying three concealed weapons with him, including a Glock, the brand allegedly used by Loughner.

Sentiment at the gun show was clear: The problem is not the legal ownership of guns, but guns in the hands of the deranged. In fact, the more guns in the hands of the law-abiding, the better. “If one person was carrying and had courage last week, that guy would’ve only shot once,” one vendor observed.

Of course, Loughner wasn’t breaking any current laws in Arizona when he bought his Glock and extended-round clips. It was perfectly legal for him or any other law-abiding soul to carry concealed weapons to the shooting site. Multiply the Jared Loughners and the lethal arsenals they are entitled to acquire and conceal, and the result is ... increased public safety?